Cllr Phil Bullivant, of Gaze Hill, Highweek, Newton Abbot, writes:

In your letters page last week (Mid-Devon Advertiser, October 21) you printed two letters from Lib Dem Councillors complaining about the salary of Teignbridge Council’s chief executive.

Teignbridge Council is now award winning and nationally seen as a high achieving council that has and is delivering major improvements to residents across a wide range of services.

The management team at Teignbridge has successfully delivered

- A strategy to deliver a wide range of improved services

- A development plan to enable structured development to take place

- Over 600 new homes per year with over 90 per cent taken by local residents

- Over 200 affordable homes per year

- New and enhanced facilities for the homeless and oppressed

- Major multi million investments in towns across the region

- Invested in and improved waste collection and recycling facilities

- Created Cross Party Partnerships with adjacent councils to deliver improved services to residents

-Delivered yearly cost savings of millions of pounds and made possible the successful replacement of millions of pounds in government grant income without the need to increase local taxes.

These changes were necessary to address the issues left by the previous Lib Dem administration (of which the Lib Dem letter writers were part) which

created an expensive and poorly performing joint working partnership with Torridge that had our executive team spending over half of each week travelling between locations and did not deliver any savings failed to deliver the required numbers of new homes and fewer than 40 affordable homes per year did not invest in waste collection facilities did not invest to protect the homeless and disadvantaged required annual council tax increases to pay for their profligacy.

Having recognised the issues faced by the council, this Conservative administration sought to recruit and retain the best people within the council to build a team who could and subsequently have made such a difference to the delivery of services to residents.

The council recognised the need to be prudent with council tax payers’ money and adopted a policy of rewarding achievements by applying nationally accepted standards to reward and retain the essential skills that we need.

After six years of no increases the award made in 2015 was fully independently justified.

The current attacks by the Lib Dems is unjustified and will cause our officers to question why their achievements are so underrated and vilified locally but applauded nationally.

I am concerned that the Lib Dem’s lack of respect for and attempt to vilify our successful council officers by not recognising their achievements and attacking their salaries will result in a loss of key skills that will hamper our progress towards a vibrant and dynamic Teignbridge that works for all.

Our officers have worked hard to earn our appreciation and deserve better.